THE first time I recall being told that I had Christ’s blood on my hands I was 10. My friend Vincent’s grandmother or his great aunt took me aside and broke the bad news. Then she threw in a kicker: Because I’m a Jew, she said, I can’t go to heaven, only to hell.

I remember thinking that she was nuts.

When I got home, my father told me to ignore that stuff, that he used to hear the same thing a lot when he was growing up, but few people think that way anymore. He wouldn’t have used the term “enlightened age,” but that’s what he was getting at.

He was right. For a while. For nearly the next 40 years I didn’t hear much about having Christ’s blood on my hands or being consigned to hell. And I spent four of those years at a Christian college in the sticks.

But now I hear it all the time. And my kids hear it a lot more than I did as a kid. What do I tell them? Ignore it; it’s fading away?

I told them that despite what foreign religious fanatics did to America on 9/11 and no matter how noble our intent may be in Iraq, no country has an exclusive on extremists and a lot of people are of a mind that their religious beliefs are the only ones that count – everyone else can, should and will go to hell.

And I advised them to not so much as ever drift in such a direction. That’s the best I could do.

The release of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” has resurrected the public, widespread and easily spoken biblical interpretation that places Christ’s blood on my family’s hands and tickets our souls for a one-way trip to hell.

In recent weeks, well versed, smiling men and women have appeared on TV news and topical talk shows to deliver the same message: we mean no offense to our Jewish brethren, they say, but scripture is scripture. And these folks are fully and carefully indulged because, after all, no one would dare want to be perceived as having insulted men and women of God.

Since “Passion” was released, TV has shown footage of people leaving theaters after viewing the film. They stop to testify to the movie’s authenticity: “Now I know what happened.” And that’s that.

None of these filmgoers is asked if they might be confusing a movie with a documentary. None is asked why this history-based movie, unlike hundreds of others, is completely accurate. Such a question, after all, might be interpreted as insulting.

Well, I’m not looking to insult anyone, either, but I’m not going to hell. I’m not close to perfect but I pay my taxes, I don’t litter and I haven’t murdered anyone since breakfast.

And if Jews did kill Christ 2,000 years ago, I don’t have Christ’s blood on my hands anymore than the descendants of John Wilkes Booth, 139 years later, have Abe Lincoln’s blood on theirs.

Not far from my home stands the Jonas Salk Middle School. It’s named for the man who developed the vaccine for polio. Salk, who died in 1995, was Jewish. Actually, he wasn’t Jew-ish, he was a Jew. He’s in hell? The school board named a school after a man who went to hell?

The man who cured polio is in hell because he’s an unrepentant sinner? But the serial murderer on death row who surrenders to Jesus has a shot at heaven? What would Jesus today say to followers who believe such a thing?

And yet people who preach such beliefs – that heaven only accepts reservations from those who believe what they believe – are now all over the tube. And they’re treated with the utmost respect and sensitivity and cordiality because it would be unkind and unwise to say anything that might hurt their feelings.